As the title suggests. There is no reason to have the letters of recommendation. Rep is horribly easy to get now. It was a horrible idea from the start and did nothing but let people skip the hard part of the grind in the game.
There is no reason to still have it in the game with the emissary flags and everything else.
@capt-pilotes said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
There are okay.
Some people don't have too much time for playing and this gives a slight boost every month.
They are optional so if you don't want to boost your levels just don' buy them.
There is no reason to boost your levels in this game. It doesn't unlock anything special. Just by playing the game you'll get the levels so why rush something you don't need to rush? Again, it doesn't unlock anything to level up. Theres no skills, no special powers, nothing really. Just play the game, turn in loot, and you'll level up.
There was no reason to add the letters in the first place and with the introduction of the emissary flags there is no reason for it now. Players getting Pirate Legend in less than a week. I've seen Pirate Legends with less than 1.5m meters sailed. That is a incredibly low about of sailing to get to Pirate Legend.
Not needed.
Why do you guys care so much about how OTHER PIRATES choose to level up? It doesn't affect you in any way whatsoever!
...and don't give me the "I worked far too hard and far too long to get mine" spiel - what they do and how they do it doesn't diminish your own accomplishments AT ALL - thinking that it does is just your own mind working against you.
Besides, they can only level up 1x each month in each company, so it's not like it's boosting, which goes quickly. If they don't play, it would take them 75 years!
Outside of a few cosmetics, levels don't mean squat. So again I ask - why do you care so much?
Theres no reason to have it thats why. Its a useless mechanic honestly. With emissary flags and loot being everywhere and the new flameheart event. Its honestly pointless. It will also stop players from posting "hey can I buy more blah blah blah"
Why have the mechanic when its not needed anymore?
@xultanis-dragon said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
Theres no reason to have it thats why. Its a useless mechanic honestly. With emissary flags and loot being everywhere and the new flameheart event. Its honestly pointless. It will also stop players from posting "hey can I buy more blah blah blah"
Why have the mechanic when its not needed anymore?
Perhaps because it's already there, pirates still use it, and it's optional...
There's no reason to remove it. It's also not useless because it actually does something. You probably just don't like it because you think that it's in some way unfair. It's not.
@galactic-geek said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
@xultanis-dragon said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
Theres no reason to have it thats why. Its a useless mechanic honestly. With emissary flags and loot being everywhere and the new flameheart event. Its honestly pointless. It will also stop players from posting "hey can I buy more blah blah blah"
Why have the mechanic when its not needed anymore?
Perhaps because it's already there, pirates still use it, and it's optional...
There's no reason to remove it. It's also not useless because it actually does something. You probably just don't like it because you think that it's in some way unfair. It's not.
Has nothing to do with fair or not fair, I honestly believe its useless. Gaining Rep is easy beyond belief. Just by playing the game you gain the rep.
Players are still asking for Rare to change Letters back to the way they were or asking for more per month and I can't see any reason to have them in the game at all in the first place.
I went from 65 to 75 in OOS in about a week. Playing a total of maybe 2 hours a day for a week? OOS Emissary flag and doing Flameheart and Ghost ships. I did all of that solo.
I understand that some players have ONLY 2 hours to play a week but again, whats the point of actually buying a Letter when you are going to get the Rep just by playing the game and turning in? It all makes no sense to me. How does it harm anyone for removing it?
A bunch of players that I have played with used Letters to get to level 50 of Sea Dogs, but they also wanted to get all 240 wins. If you play Arena, by the time you reach 240 wins you'll be at level 50. Same thought process for the game. They are going to be gaining Rep anyways and lord knows a lot of them are going to start complaining that theres nothing left to do after they get maxed level anyways. We've all seen it happen.
Player A complains that they want more Letters of Recommendation so they can level up with doubloons, but that same player complains about the Reputation Cap being too easy to reach.
?? Why keep something in the game that servers no purpose?? The original reason for the letters is gone completely. If the reason for their creation is gone why keep it?
@galactic-geek said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
Why do you guys care so much about how OTHER PIRATES choose to level up? It doesn't affect you in any way whatsoever!
Outside of a few cosmetics, levels don't mean squat. So again I ask - why do you care so much?
The internal context of fighting over loot is the entire reason the game is interesting. Attacking someone and seeing a huge haul, knowing it took them a lot of effort to get. Or being attacked when you have a bunch of loot gets your heart racing in a way you don't really experience from just fighting matches over and over in whatever other game.
Adventure mode is already way more popular then Arena. And when you run out of things to earn, almost nobody keeps playing Arena. Likewise in adventure mode the playerbase is active in waves tied directly to the latest update, and then people stop playing when they've earned the latest cosmetic. Because gold and rep are so meaningless.
And really all the different types voyages are fun, and fine addition to the game. But I don't think almost anyone would do any of them more then a few times, if you took out the social aspects, both cooperative and adversarial, and the context of why you're doing them.
You do the voyages, even if it gets boring sometimes. Becsuse it earns you something. And because the greater experience of participating in the world is worth it. But why do it the hard way, and risk losing it all, if I can just buy a level.
I mean really if it doesn't matter what other Pirates are doing, there's no reason we shouldn't have Private servers with full progression as well. But we won't get that, because the entire dynamic that makes the game interesting would collapse over night. Instead Rare just keeps treading water, adding one little thing to earn every month, but not addressing the underlying mechanics that make everything so meaningless.
And people enjoy the game so they're trying to create meaning behind it. OK sure, putting in the effort has no in game consequences. No better guns or stats or anything, fine. But for the love of God, can it at least mean there's some reward that can't be obtained an easier way. Buying levels undermines that. Alliances undermine that. Rereleaseing old cosmetics undermines that. How they've handled commendations has consistently undermined that in a hundred different ways.
Sometimes I kinda think it's intentional. SoT is Pirate Purgatory. And the game is intended to be addictive and just good enough in many different ways to pull in as many different types of people to all suffer together in the eternal torment of its meaninglessness.
I'm going to be buying my last Merchant Alliance levels, because I'm already very close to lvl 50, and I don't really want to spend more time grinding out voyages, even with the Emissary flag up. Merchant missions just aren't fun, and I've already come too far to switch to one of the other, new companies.
Don't even have to grind up merchant missions, just put the flag up and do flameheart or even a fort. Kill a Kraken or Meg or go find some skelly ships. You could literally do anything in the game and eventually level up especially if you get that emissary flag to 5. Killing skelly ships gets you a full level at level 1 or 2, half a level at the higher levels. you get a ton of xp for doing a fort. Picking up crates from doing flame heart.
You can literally do anything and go up in reputation, I don't get the belief that letters make anything easier.
@xultanis-dragon said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
As the title suggests. There is no reason to have the letters of recommendation. Rep is horribly easy to get now. It was a horrible idea from the start and did nothing but let people skip the hard part of the grind in the game.
There is no reason to still have it in the game with the emissary flags and everything else.
I see no benefit from removing them apart from "I ground everything, I never bought it, so no one else should be able to". As their impact is negligible, and they help a bit to progress even when people were not able to play enough, I am for keeping them in the game.
They already limited their function and besides from your argument-free post, you flat out lie by saying that people skip with these letters the "hard part" of the grind; they cannot due to limitations set in place for exactly this reason.
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Sorry to disturb you in your fixation, but: no.
There is more to it, and that is why people also do other stuff, and I am not interested in how you get off, peeps like you get a cannonball to the face and there they go. Still, I like to attack others from time to time because we can do it and why not when were at it, also it is essential to the game, but this fixation of yours is just as nonsensical as forbidding PvP.
And please, do not pretend we are debating philosophical questions here, and stop putting up straw man issues since neither Alliances nor the letters have anything close to an impact you are pretending here. Again, it is cool that you have such obsessions, but keep them in your head and away from other people.
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@weststormborn said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
@xultanis-dragon tbh, I use them for hunter's call and Sea Dogs.
That is their purpose and over time you progress a bit faster; I like to buy them now and then, just to get a bit closer to the max level in Hunter's Call, but there are so many commendations to get, after reaching level 50 there is much left to be done.
@schneebaer17905 said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
@xultanis-dragon said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
As the title suggests. There is no reason to have the letters of recommendation. Rep is horribly easy to get now. It was a horrible idea from the start and did nothing but let people skip the hard part of the grind in the game.
There is no reason to still have it in the game with the emissary flags and everything else.
I see no benefit from removing them apart from "I ground everything, I never bought it, so no one else should be able to". As their impact is negligible, and they help a bit to progress even when people were not able to play enough, I am for keeping them in the game.
They already limited their function and besides from your argument-free post, you flat out lie by saying that people skip with these letters the "hard part" of the grind; they cannot due to limitations set in place for exactly this reason.
They limit their function now. I stated that at the start it did nothing but let players skip the grind part of the game and now that we have emissary flags there is honestly no reason to keep the recommendations in the game.
At the start when they released and for along time thats all they were used for. To get passed the last 5 levels of each faction or even 10 levels on 1 faction.
If the impact is negligible then there is no reason to keep it in the game. Its useless as there is no grind for reputation anymore.
Same thing with Hunters call or Sea Dogs, just by completing the commendation's you are going to get the levels and you will max out before you even complete the commendations anyways, so again, there is no reason for the letters.
It has nothing to do with what others consider fair or not fair, its just not needed as the original reason for its implementation is gone.
It used to take hundreds of hours of game time to reach pirate legend. You can reach pirate legend in 3 days now. Reputation is not a grind anymore so there is no reason to have it.
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Sorry to disturb you in your fixation, but: no.
There is more to it, and that is why people also do other stuff, and I am not interested in how you get off, peeps like you get a cannonball to the face and there they go. Still, I like to attack others from time to time because we can do it and why not when were at it, also it is essential to the game, but this fixation of yours is just as nonsensical as forbidding PvP.And please, do not pretend we are debating philosophical questions here, and stop putting up straw man issues since neither Alliances nor the letters have anything close to an impact you are pretending here. Again, it is cool that you have such obsessions, but keep them in your head and away from other people.
He is not strawmaning, hes right. Alliance servers pull players out of rotation that would other wise be playing with other players. Players are still playing with other players but the game focus was suppose to be a shared world. Having players remove themselves from that world is impacting the world by limiting the type of players they could be experiencing.
Same thing with the letters, by letting players skip essential game time, they are losing out on time played that would have helped them learn more about the game. They could have been better players.
Before the introduction to letters everyone agreed that you really didn't understand the games frustration until grinding the last 5 levels of Merchant alliance. Having to keep those animals safe, not losing the crates from sinking.
Its all part of the experience but players were using the letters to skip it. Which means now they avoided a crucial learning curve of the game and will probably never learn it, which means they will instead have a better understanding of the game but will instead complain about it.
Its happening now as we speak "I'm Pirate Legend Athena 20, so I know what I'm talking about, this is why this game is horrible and these are all the changes that need to be done" check the players stats and he has less than 3m meters sailed.
The game progress is horizontal and with that horizontal progress comes the experience learned from that progression. By removing the progression you remove the period of learning.
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@weststormborn said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
@xultanis-dragon tbh, I use them for hunter's call and Sea Dogs.
That is their purpose and over time you progress a bit faster; I like to buy them now and then, just to get a bit closer to the max level in Hunter's Call, but there are so many commendations to get, after reaching level 50 there is much left to be done.
There are gems everywhere, you can fish or turn in fish that you gather. Are you planning on completing the commendations one day? If you are then why bother buying the levels? By completing the commendations you'll reach level 50 anyways. So again, the letters aren't needed.
Arnt these only buy-able once a month? I do agree with you, leveling up is soooo much easier now they are kind of pointless. I say kind of because I do think they can still benefit some like solo players or people who really do not get on as much as they would like, its just an extra little push really at this point, I remember back when they first came out and it was not a once a month thing, that was silly.
I do not think the removal of them would be devastating by any means but also do not think them being available is a big enough deal to spend time to remove. I dont know, just my thoughts.
@capt-pilotes said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
There are okay.
Some people don't have too much time for playing and this gives a slight boost every month.
They are optional so if you don't want to boost your levels just don' buy them.
theres literally no rush leveling up any faction in this game
@xultanis-dragon Aye not a big fan of it, half of my crew dont like the arena so they dont really play it much but every month they buy one level.
Eventually they will get to level 50 and they dont deserve it.
@galactic-geek It does harm progression and not the whiny point of "I worked hard when there was barely loot in the game" its about how you want to value progression.
Why not just giving away level 20 Athena? It dosent hurt us so why not?
Because progression have difficulty and it brings value to that status and you can say that PL title does not mean anything but it is, it means that this player have spent certain amount of time so he sank sometimes won some battles lost some and maybe learned, can read a map it means something.
Making it easy is bad, if you remember the first year PL title took longer so this title held weight and players were experienced and thats how it should be rushing it does not help.
@faceyourdemon said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
@xultanis-dragon Aye not a big fan of it, half of my crew dont like the arena so they dont really play it much but every month they buy one level.
Eventually they will get to level 50 and they dont deserve it.
If you can only buy one a month they’re going to reach level 50 in approximately 4 years. I’d argue that level of commitment to not playing the game counts as earning it
@vicegrip96 You level up very quickly at the start so from level 25 or 30 its still a progress on something that you barely step your foot at.
@faceyourdemon I know I was kidding.
To be real though I don’t think this is the biggest broken mechanic in the game. Aside from Sea Dogs I’d argue the emissaries are what lead to the biggest jumps in levelling up.
One level a month using doubloons (arguably a dead currency anyway for a lot of players) isn’t going to shift things too much. When I was getting to PL about a a year ago I was playing 4 times a week for 3 hours ago and the grind was unreal. Being able to skip a couple of the later levels on merchant was a massive help and meant I could get on with Athena voyages. Not sure I agree with the take some people have that skipping levels means you miss key gameplay experience. I may have bought levels but I’ve definitely learnt the hard way that chickens in cages don’t breathe underwater.
@vicegrip96 said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
@faceyourdemon said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
@xultanis-dragon Aye not a big fan of it, half of my crew dont like the arena so they dont really play it much but every month they buy one level.
Eventually they will get to level 50 and they dont deserve it.If you can only buy one a month they’re going to reach level 50 in approximately 4 years. I’d argue that level of commitment to not playing the game counts as earning it
This. ^^^
It hardly make a difference, I've only played for about 4 months but put hundreds of hours in. So I bought 4 levels in each faction, it would have added about an extra week on at the rate I was levelling up near the end when i had it in my sights. I was something like level 56 OoS and 52 MA when I hit PL anyway.
'3 day legends' if they exist will be absolutely clueless so bring them on I say, can't wait to nick their Athena's thank you!
Don't bust a blood vessel over it either way..
@vicegrip96 "I’ve definitely learnt the hard way that chickens in cages don’t breathe underwater"
Amen to that 😂
Dont get me wrong its not the end of the world when my crew do it i dont go and say call them noobs for buying levels because its in the game and players can do whatever they want i just call them noobs.... Because they are.
I think that OP is only talking about the whole idea at the moment with the emissary system we dont need to buy levels and i agree.
And how in the end it devalue progress if this feature wouldnt have been in the game no one would have ever suggested the idea of buying levels
@faceyourdemon said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
@galactic-geek It does harm progression and not the whiny point of "I worked hard when there was barely loot in the game" its about how you want to value progression.
Why not just giving away level 20 Athena? It dosent hurt us so why not?
Because progression have difficulty and it brings value to that status and you can say that PL title does not mean anything but it is, it means that this player have spent certain amount of time so he sank sometimes won some battles lost some and maybe learned, can read a map it means something.
Making it easy is bad, if you remember the first year PL title took longer so this title held weight and players were experienced and thats how it should be rushing it does not help.
The thing is value is subjective. Specifically, value is often collectively subjective within a group, because it has to be agreed upon to work. In your example using 20 Athena levels, what you're using is an extreme example to make your point, but it doesn't work for 2 reasons. 1. The letters are nowhere near that extreme - they do no effect leveling in a major way, ever since the once a month limitation was implemented. 2. The silent majority of pirates think it's just fine as is, and as a result, your extreme example has little to no, well, value.
@galactic-geek It does hold a value because my point is clear that there is a progress that players have to go through and we can all agree on that, and like my exemple about some players in my crew are buying levels for the sea dogs even when they dont play on it that much.
The exemple was extreme because not caring as you said "why do we care" is extreme, give others things does affect you its not just about strength its about building an economy in a game and a goal.
@faceyourdemon Except there is no economy in this game except for that of your own personal financial gain. An economy requires trade between people.
Do you see any real economic trading happening within the game between pirates?
You might see a few pieces of loot traded for commendations, sure, but that's probably the end of it.
@galactic-geek economy is not just the trade between players with have an economy with the npc and logic.
So your point is not valid on this one.
@xultanis-dragon said in Remove Letters of Recommendation:
Don't even have to grind up merchant missions, just put the flag up and do flameheart or even a fort. Kill a Kraken or Meg or go find some skelly ships. You could literally do anything in the game and eventually level up especially if you get that emissary flag to 5. Killing skelly ships gets you a full level at level 1 or 2, half a level at the higher levels. you get a ton of xp for doing a fort. Picking up crates from doing flame heart.
You can literally do anything and go up in reputation, I don't get the belief that letters make anything easier.
I also don't play that often; the friends that I play with are sporadic at best, and I don't always feel like using the Discord to find more people.
